Another Chronic National Weather Service Problem Rears Its Ugly Head

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Happy to report that radar data from the three radars resumed at 5:19pm Saturday. I am guessing that other products (e.g., warnings) from Wichita and Dodge City will be able to be issued. The outage was about 18 hours (!) in duration. 

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We've had another major National Weather Service communications outage -- which began Friday evening during a tornado watch, no less! It continues as of this moment (3pm Saturday).

With virtually zero media coverage, the National Weather Service (NWS) offices in Wichita and Dodge City, Kansas, went offline at 11:37pm Friday...with a tornado watch in effect for part of their service territory. In addition to losing warning services from those two offices (in the case of Dodge City, for a dangerous 45 minutes), their radars were unavailable and they took the Federal Aviation Administration's Wichita Terminal Doppler Radar with them! See screen capture below. Red = radar out of service. 
The last image before radar service was lost. 
The backup for the Dodge City office is Goodland, Kansas -- but it is so short-staffed that it is no longer a 24/7 office. The secondary backup for Dodge is Grand Forks, ND -- but they were not able to respond for 45 minutes. Television meteorologists were issuing their own warnings but if someone didn't know to turn on the television, they were out of luck. 

These NWS's communication problems have nothing to do with President Trump or DOGE. These problems have been around at least 15 years as subsequent NOAA administrators have kicked the can down the road. Examples below. 
Headlines from the Washington Post, embedded in my blog coverage of NWS outages in 2021 and 2022.
These outages often occur during major tornadoes and flash floods when the system is taxed. Below is a screen capture of the radar in March, 2022, outage as a strong tornado was in progress in the south Des Moines metro area. The Des Moines office communications were limited due to a cable cut......in Dallas. There is little to no redundancy. 

The National Weather Services problems are major and deep. Yet, I cannot find any MSM coverage of this critical outage.

Frequent readers of this blog know I have no problem criticizing the DOGE layoff fiasco and I am glad Congress is working on a long-term fix. But, this dangerous outage would have occurred if Vice President Harris had won the election. 

I have laid out my suggestions for fixing the National Weather Service's problems here. While those, if implemented, would be a big step forward, what we desperately need is a National Disaster Review Board modeled after the hugely successful NTSB. An impartial board could advise Presidents, Congress and the American people how we get out of the worsening NOAA/FEMA/emergency management/increasing disaster threat risks. 

Congress??

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